Several years ago I got tired of having to water my potted tomato plants twice a day and began developing self-watering pots. What I used this last summer worked well up to the point a heat wave occurred in the Pacific Northwest with a month of tenpertures in the upper eighties, and over ninety at times. Found I had to hand water every day to keep things alive. I only grow small bushy plants these days. Used grow such plants as Early Girl but don't like tomato plants that stretch out with a tomsto here and there anymore. Glacer is now my favorite tomato and in every way. It provides many clusters of up a half dozen medium small tomatoes that are strong in tomato flavor and sweet. The set-up I used this summer was made with inexpensive food-grade five gallon buckets from Walmart for the reservoir and much smaller mop buckets also from Walmart for the soil. These fit into the larger buckets perfectly, and extended halfway down inside the five gallon buckets A two inch or a little lsrger hole was bored into the side of the larger reservoir buckets to serve as both filler holes as well as overflow holes. These holes were positioned just below the bottom of the inside buckets. In the button of the smaller inside buckets four one inch holes were drilled toward the sides of the inner buckets for the purpose of running wicks through them. For the wicks I used torn kitchen fabric toweling ripped into four by twelve inch sizes. These I rolled up and positioned them extending up through the holes as to reach about four inches through thr potting soil when it would be added to the pot. The lower ends of the wicks were wrapped in black trash bag plastic so the wicks would not be drying out as the water in the reservoir lowered. The bottom of the wicks reached sll the way down to the bottom of the big bucket. The reservoir bucket. For potting soil I used Miacle Grow as I had found it pulls the water from the wicks really well and draws it all the way to the top of the pot. Had found that various other potting mixtures I tried did not work at all. I started the wicking process by well watering the soil from the top. I used finely powdered water soluble plant food made for for tomatoes, adding it in through the filler hole. Though I also spread some on the soil's surface before I watered the pot from the top. I was concerned that the plant food might not get wicked, but it did. For next year I am going to switch out the wick materisl I used for purely synthetic stuff, and add more wicks. Tomatoes are thirsty things. Oh, I also added wireframe tomato towers to the pots (ultra necessary) and I plan to incorporate heavy duty clear plastic tents next year too. Those I have yet to make. It is a lot of work to grow tomatoes but I do it because they are my favorite vegetable and the ones they have in the supermarkets here in the Pacific Northwest are shipped from California and are grown for best shipping making them flavorless and rock hard.

Could be either the tobacco or the tomato hornworm sphinx, Edna. Both are beautiful night-flying moths. The caterpillars are gorgeous, too! If, when it hatches, it has a red horn, it's the tobacco hornworm (manduca sexta). If it's black, its the tomato hornworm (manduca quinquemaculata). I haven't had one single tobacco or tomato hornworm in my garden this year, darn it! Susan

Mark, There are several possible reasons. Tomato plants are individuals and not clones, so they all will not act the same as one another. They'll have their own individual responses to the conditions in which they're living. Once you've grown tomatoes for a while, you'll even notice that a specific variety performs differently (and even tastes differently) in different years. You cannot compare peppers to tomatoes because they are not exactly the same. Hot peppers, in particular, are not as affected by the heat/humidity as tomatoes are, for example, so they tend to set fruit all summer long. Some sweet peppers do so as well, although some of them slow down in the worst of the summer heat. Fish Emulsion isn't really high nitrogen, or at least not high enough to impede flowering in and of itself. Most fish emulsions have an NPK ratio of either 5-1-1 or 5-2-2, which hardly is an exceptionally high amount of nitrogen. Is the issue you're seeing that no flowers are forming at all or is it that flowers are forming and dropping off because fertilization is not occurring? That's a key issue because they are separate problems. If no flowers are forming, then the plants are not mature enough to set fruit and carry a load or there is too much nitrogen (which means your mix has too much nitro because fish emulsion alone wouldn't do it) or some other sort of nutritional imbalance. Or, it could mean they are not receiving enough hours per day of sunlight. If flowers are forming and falling off unpollinated, that's blossom drop and it generally is related to high heat/high humidity. The larger the fruit a plant produces, the more that flowering/fruitset seems to be impacted negatively by heat heat/high humidity. So, even when the heat and humidity are high, many of the bite-size tomatoes (whether they're classified as cherry, grape, currant, plum or pear-shaped) flower and set fruit just fine, but a few of them do not. Varieties that produce really large fruit often do not flower or set fruit well in high heat and high humidity. Some varieties that produce smaller slicer or saladette types will set fruit at high temps almost as well as the bite-sized ones do. Every tomato variety reacts differently, so some may have blossom drop when nighttime lows are exceeding 72 degrees, but others might not see blossom drop until nighttime lows are exceeding 75. The same is true with high temps. For some varieties, 92 degrees appears to be the point at which fertilization ceases but for others it might be 95 degrees. Then, if you have high humidity, that can make pollen sticky so that it clumps together and does not shed from the anthers like it should. Conversely, in very low relative humidity you may see fruit set even at high temperatures. My best guess is that part of the problem is the varieties you chose...most are mid-season or late-season and not early season. So, they flower and fruit a bit later than tomatoes with a shorter DTM. Keep in mind that DTMs are estimates only and your actual results may vary quite a bit from the DTMs. Part of the problem is undoubtedly the high humidity and/or high heat or some combination thereof. If you are getting blossoms and they then abort without setting fruit, it could be the heat or the humidity, but it also could be poor air flow. If the pollen is a little sticky and isn't shedding from the anthers, you can help it along with thumping each individual blossom or by gently shaking the tomato cage. Also, while you don't want to keep the soil heavily saturated, you want to keep it evenly moist and not let it dry out too much in between waterings. This is especially true of tomatoes in containers as uneven watering can contribute to blossom end rot. If your plants are cycling from dry to moist and back to dry again, the plants may not feel like they're receiving consistent enough moisture to carry fruit. With regards to the varieties you listed, Brandywine is late, late, late and produces poorly in our heat. Arkansas Traveler is a late one and usually doesn't bloom for me until sometimes in June, and then those fruit are ready to pick by August. Black Krim and Cherokee Purple usually flower for me in late May, but this year they aren't, so I think it is the weather because they're certainly large enough, have consistent moisture and are in well-amended soil with good fertility. Some years Roma can sit and wait forever before it blooms, but once it does, it sets a lot of fruit and they are ready fairly quickly. Black Cherry sometimes is slow to start flowerings and setting fruit, and sometimes not. Sometimes it slows down more in the heat of the summer than other cherries do and sometimes it doesn't. It is kind of a garden diva at times, but it gets away with it simply because the flavor of the fruit is so good. I don't know what your temperature and humidity have been like for the last two or three weeks, but mine have been too hot on some days for fertilization to occur but not on others. Remember that I said that plants are individuals? I have right around 100 tomato plants and some have already produced several ripe tomatoes, some of which have been quite large, and others haven't even bloomed yet while a few have set and ripened a lot of smallish tomatoes. That is pretty typical behavior. Also, tomatoes in containers do not peform exactly like those in the ground. Remember that tomato plants in the ground can send their roots out searching for more water or more nutrition if they need it, but plants in containers are trapped in the containers so cannot help themselves in that same manner. So, tomato plants in containers have a smaller margin of error than those in the ground and they may stunt or stall if they are not happy. Some years I have as many as 40 tomato plants in containers. This year I have 9. Why? Because I was expecting a hotter-than-average and drier-than-average growing season and I knew that tomatoes in containers would struggle more in those conditions. Thus I put fewer of them in containers, and my smallest containers this year are 20-gallon containers. I have grown tomatoes in containers as small as 5 gallons, but tomato plants in containers that small are hard to keep happy and often do not produce well in our climate. For maximum production, they need larger containers that hold more moisture, that allow their roots to spread out and that keep their roots cool. Don't overlook the possiblity that the heat is just baking the roots of the plants in containers. Dawn

Yes the green hard to see caterpillars i think are the most common and have damaged my tomato plants a little bit before i caught them. You have to look at every inch of your plant thorougly because they can hide anywere and not be seen. I found a little green worm under my pepper plants leaf one time (not sure what it was) but havent seen them since. I just recently started seeing my tomato plants stems turn hollow so i looked it up and there is a different type of caterpillar that will make entry into the stem of your tomato plant and will eat it from the inside. I had to throw my plant away because it was completely hollow and dead. I also had a watermelon plant which did really good until it started getting infested with melon aphids on the backside of the leaves. I heard that lady bugs are really beneficial for your garden and they say an adult lady bug will eat up to 5000 aphids in its lifetime. I will try this method and will post how it works but i seen someone post about wasps helping with problems in their garden and would like to know more about how the wasps work.